Training Data, in Plain English

You keep hearing the phrase "training data." Here's what it means, minus the jargon.

Training data is the material an AI system studied in order to learn its job. Think of it like textbooks. A student who studied only one textbook will answer every question from that one book's point of view. An AI system works the same way. Its answers reflect what it was fed.

That is why this question matters so much: what did this system learn from?

If the training data was narrow, the answers will be narrow. If it included mistakes, the answers will repeat them. And if it included people's personal information without proper permission, that problem is now baked into the system.

Before your team adopts any AI tool, ask the vendor what the model trained on. You are not being difficult. You are doing the same thing a teacher does on the first day of class: checking the syllabus.

A system you can't explain starts with data you never examined.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.